The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] In the course of these reflections—as I already hinted at yesterday—I would like to speak to you about the significant transformative impulses present in our time that drive the artistic evolution of humanity. I would like to connect this to what becomes apparent to you when you look at our building, namely that of which this building is intended to be a modest beginning. However, in order for us to engage in such reflections, it will be necessary to lay a foundation—a foundation concerning the connection between the artistic and the insights we have gained regarding the relationship of the human being to the world in general. Today I would like to undertake this reflection, which may seem more theoretical, and then continue tomorrow with regard to our actual “theme”—namely, the transformative impulses of artistic development.

[ 2 ] I would like to lay out what appears to be a more theoretical foundation today. In reality, for those who grasp Spiritual Science as something living, it is not a theoretical matter, but something thoroughly alive. However, this can only become fully clear to those for whom the concepts of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the “I,” and so on are not merely labels for a schematic representation of the human being, but rather the synthesis of what has truly been experienced in feelings and in mental images of the spiritual world.

[ 3 ] When we consider the individual arts, architecture appears to us as the art that is most detached from the whole of human existence. Architecture is detached from human nature in that it is placed in the service of our external impulses—either purely utilitarian impulses, as is the case with utilitarian architecture and utilitarian buildings proper, or because it must serve many idealistic interests, as is the case when its works serve worship, religious service, and so on. We shall see from the course of our considerations how the other arts—I would say—are more intimately connected to the actual human essence than architecture is. Architecture has something detached from what we call the laws governing the human inner life. And yet, for the observer of the world who proceeds from Spiritual Science, architecture actually loses this character of exteriority to a considerable degree.

[ 4 ] When we approach the concept of the human being, the first thing that meets us—as it were, the outermost aspect of this human being—is the physical body. This physical body, however, is permeated, interwoven, and interwoven with the etheric body. The physical body could be called a purely spatial body, a spatial organization. But what lies within the physical body as the etheric body—or, as you know, extends beyond the physical body and stands in intimate connection with the cosmic whole—cannot be understood without the aid of time. For, fundamentally speaking, everything in the etheric body is rhythm—a cyclical sequence of movements and activities—and the etheric body possesses a spatial character only insofar as it fills the physical body. For human imaginative perception, it is certainly necessary to create mental images of the etheric body, but that is not its essential nature. Its essential nature is the cyclical, the rhythmic, that which unfolds in time. And just as in music what matters is not the spatial but the temporal, so too, in the reality of the human etheric body—not in its imaginative representation —that what really matters is not the spatial aspect, but rather the dynamic, the moving, the actively taking shape—yet taking shape rhythmically, taking shape in melodies—that is, the temporal aspect. Certainly, there lies a difficulty here for human imagination, because human imagination is so accustomed to relating everything to space. But in order to arrive at a clear mental image of the etheric body, one must rather strive—I would say—to draw on musical concepts rather than spatial ones.

[ 5 ] If we were to highlight one more characteristic of the etheric body, we could say: This etheric body is, above all else—in that it fills the physical body and extends its activity, its rhythmic interplay, into the physical body—a body of forces. It is an outflow of forces, a manifestation of forces. And we observe these forces in phenomena that occur in human beings over the course of their lives. One phenomenon of human life that is rarely taken into account by external science and external worldviews, but which we often emphasize, is the upright posture of the human form. After all, we do not enter the world in childhood with the ability to assume the most important position or posture for human beings: the upright posture. We must first acquire it. Although this acquisition originates in the astral body, the astral body must, as it were, transfer its upward-stretching force to the etheric body, and the etheric body works over time to shape the human physical form vertically upward. Here we see the living interplay of the astral body and the etheric body in the shaping of the physical body. Now, this shaping toward an upright, vertical position is merely the most striking manifestation. Yet every time we raise a hand, a similar process takes place. In our “I,” we can only have the thought of this hand movement—of raising the hand—and this thought must then simultaneously act upon the astral body, which in turn transmits its activity—that which it perceives as an impulse—to the etheric body. And what happens then? Let us suppose that a person has their hand in such a horizontal position. Now he forms the mental image: “I want to have my hand a little higher up, here.”—This mental image, which in real life is followed by the raising of the hand, is transmitted to the astral body; within it, an impulse is formed, passing from the astral body to the etheric body, and the following now occurs in the etheric body when the hand was horizontal: First, the etheric body is drawn upward toward this position, and the hand follows. The physical hand follows what first occurs in the etheric body as a development of force. The hand follows.

[ 6 ] I will explain the entire process tomorrow; for now, I just want to point out that with every movement—with the production of any movement—we are dealing with an exertion of force, followed by a state of equilibrium. We are constantly dealing with such exertions of force and the ensuing states of equilibrium in the life of our organism. Of course, human beings have no conscious awareness of what is actually taking place within them, but what is taking place is something so infinitely wise, something so infinitely intelligent, that human intellectuality does not even come remotely close to these things. We would not be able to move a single hand if we were to rely solely on our own cleverness and knowledge, for the subtle forces that must be developed in the etheric body from the astral body—and which must then be transferred to the physical body—are entirely beyond ordinary human understanding. Yet there lies a wisdom a million times greater in what is unfolding there than when a watchmaker makes a watch. We do not usually consider this, but this wisdom truly must be unfolded. It must be unfolded, and it is unfolded precisely because we are, in fact, left to our own devices with our “I.” But the moment the “I” sends its imaginative impulses into the astral body, another being must help us. We cannot accomplish anything on our own there. A being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi must help us; we are dependent on this. With even the slightest movement of a finger, such a being—whose wisdom far surpasses human wisdom—must help us. We could do nothing but lie there motionless and create a mental image of ourselves, existing in the world in a rigid, spasmodic state, if the beings of the higher hierarchies did not continually include us in their activities.

[ 7 ] The first step in initiation, therefore, is to gain a mental image—one that arises quite naturally—of how these forces act upon human nature.

[ 8 ] We have, after all, tried to show here what it already means when simply the head rests on the hand, and so on. We come to know, so to speak, the most external aspect of our being—that which takes place through the influence of our etheric body on our physical body—within a spatial system of lines and forces. When we carry this spatial system of lines and forces—which is, in essence, constantly at work within us—out into the world and arrange matter according to this system of forces; when we detach this system of forces from ourselves and arrange matter accordingly—then architecture arises. And all architecture consists in our detaching this interplay of forces from ourselves and projecting it out into space. So that we can say: If we take the outermost boundaries of our physical body as a schematic reference here, we push the inner lawfulness—which is imprinted on the physical body by the etheric body—outward, beyond ourselves, and thereby architecture arises. All the laws present in the architectural arrangement of matter can also be found in the human body. Projecting the human body’s own laws outward into space is architecture.

[ 9 ] Now we know that, for the purposes of our consideration, the etheric body is connected to the physical body. If we turn our gaze once more to any work of architecture, what can we say about this work of architecture? We can say: There, extending out into the surrounding space, is the relationship between vertical and horizontal forces—forces that interact with one another, just as they do in the human physical body. This relationship is extended outward.

[ 10 ] Likewise, we cannot now carry what flows from the astral body into the etheric body out of ourselves, but only carry it downward from the astral body into the etheric body. So, we can bring about something that we do not separate from our own nature, do not project outward into space, but rather push deep into ourselves. When we carry out this process, we are essentially dealing with the physical manifestation of the laws of the etheric body—laws that the etheric body has received from the astral body—just as in architecture the laws of the physical body are made physical and projected outward. And through this—which arises from our etheric body just as architecture arises from our physical body—sculpture comes into being, so that we, as it were, shift the laws of the etheric body down one level.

Architecture
physical body

Sculpture
Etheric Body

[ 11 ] Just as we project the laws of the physical body outward into outer space in architecture, so do we shift the laws of the etheric body down a level in sculpture. We do not separate them from ourselves, but rather we project them directly into our form. Just as we must seek architecture as the embodiment of the laws of the physical body outside of us, so must we seek sculpture as the embodiment of the laws of our etheric body within us; we then incorporate them into the works of art only through the act of creation. All the laws of sculpture become clear when we consider this. Just as in architecture we project only the laws of the physical body—its spatial lines and forces—into space and introduce nothing else into that space—nothing from the etheric body, nothing from the astral body, nothing from the “I”—so it is with sculpture that we lower the laws of the etheric body by one level; we include nothing of the astral body, nothing of the “I,” except insofar as these—namely, the astral body and the “I”—send impulses into the etheric body. Therefore, the sculptural work appears before us in such a way that it evokes the appearance of life. It would possess complete life if the “I” and the astral body were present within it. So when we seek the laws of sculpture, we must be clear that they are the laws of our etheric body, just as architecture contains the laws of our physical body.

[ 12 ] If we do the same with regard to the astral body—that is, if we push the astral down another level, into the etheric body—then we are pushing down what already lives within the human being. Nothing arises there that can truly be spatial anymore, because when the astral body pushes its way into the etheric body, it cannot push its way into something spatial—for the etheric body is rhythm, harmony, and so on. Only an image can arise there, and indeed an image does arise: painting arises. Painting is the art form that embodies the laws of our astral body just as sculpture embodies the laws of our etheric body and architecture embodies the laws of our physical body.

Painting
Astral Body

[ 13 ] If we now turn our attention to the fourth member of our human being—the “I”—and push this “I,” in accordance with its own laws, down into the astral body, further down, and allow it to remain mobile and active within it, we gain yet another art—one that does not contain what acts within the “I,” which we might summarize through language or our ordinary mental images, but rather something that has been shifted down one level from the “I” toward the subconscious. As it were, with the horizon of our consciousness, we descend by half a segment of our human being, we descend half a level; we plunge down with the “I” into the astral body: this is how music arises.

Music
I

[ 14 ] Music, then, contains the laws of our “I,” but not in the way we live them out in ordinary, mundane life; rather, they are pushed down into the subconscious, into the astral body—as if the “I” had submerged beneath the surface of the astral body and were floating and undulating within it, in accordance with the laws of the astral body.

[ 15 ] When we wish to speak of the higher members of the human being—beginning with the Spirit-Self—we can only speak of it as something that is still outside the human being. For it is only in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch that we gradually begin to make the Spirit-Self an inner member of the human being. But when the human being takes this in as coming from a higher source and sinks it into his or her “I”—that is, dives back down with what can only be sensed today, just as a swimmer dives into the water—into the “I” with the intuitions of his or her Spirit-Self, then poetry arises.

Poetry
Spirit-Self

[ 16 ] And if one were to take this even further, then—to a certain extent, of course—one could say: Since our surroundings, our mental-spiritual environment, contain the Life-Spirit of what we will later take in, this Life-Spirit could one day be absorbed into the Spirit-Self. But of course, this must still be something that can only reach a certain degree of perfection in a very distant future. For in attempting to sink the Life-Spirit into the Spirit-Self, human beings must, after all, live entirely within an element that is still entirely foreign to us today. So, at most, one can speak of this realm in the same way one speaks of a child’s babbling in contrast to the later perfection of language. One can sense that there will one day be an art of great perfection that, in a sense, transcends poetry just as poetry—by which, of course, no superiority is meant, but merely a hierarchical arrangement—transcends music, music transcends painting, painting transcends sculpture, and sculpture transcends architecture. You can, of course, sense that I am alluding here to something we know today only in its very, very earliest stages, something of which we can have only the very first glimpses: eurythmy. Eurythmy is truly something that must now emerge as a necessity in human evolution, yet it gives no cause for arrogance, for today it can, of course, be nothing more than a stammering compared to what this art will one day have to become.

Eurythmy
Life-Spirit

[ 17 ] We can now begin with what I would call a somewhat more in-depth consideration. But if we wish to undertake this consideration, we must be clear that the human organism is truly not as simple as one often likes to create a mental image of it for the sake of one’s own intellectual convenience. It is indeed infinitely convenient to imagine that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, the “I,” and so on. If one can list these things in this way and has a rough mental image of what they are, it is very easy to be satisfied with a reasonably convenient understanding. But things are not that simple. These are not layers that are simply nested one inside the other—physical body, etheric body, astral body, “I”—but are, in fact, quite complex structures. And if, for example, one singles out the astral body, one cannot simply say, “Well, that’s the astral body, and that’s that”—rather, the matter is more complicated.

[ 18 ] The astral body, for example—yes, one can only use words that come close to describing it—has its own internal structure and consists of seven parts. Just as the human being itself is divided into seven parts—physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man—so the astral body passes through all these parts, and there is, as it were, a most subtle part of the astral body that could be described as being primarily attuned to and formed for the physical body. Thus, there is a lawful manifestation of the astral body for the physical body, a lawful manifestation of the astral body for the etheric body, a lawful manifestation of the astral body for itself, a lawful manifestation of the astral body for the “I,” a lawful manifestation of the astral body for the Spirit-Self, for the Life-Spirit, and for the Spirit-Man. Each of these members is itself sevenfold, so that when we consider the sevenfold human being and realize that each member is itself sevenfold, we already have forty-nine members. This is, of course, a terrible horror for modern psychology, which regards the soul as a unity and does not wish to engage with such matters. But for true knowledge—such as must gradually emerge in the spiritual evolution of humanity—this is in fact not without significance. For when we know that the astral body has a sevenfold nature and is an organism of inner life impulses, we will say to ourselves: Within this astral body and its sevenfold structure, processes also take place between its individual members. - The part of the astral body that corresponds to the physical body stands in a certain interrelationship with the part of the astral body that corresponds to the etheric body, and with the part that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. And these are not merely abstract assumptions; rather, it can certainly happen in the human organism, for example, that—let us say—a person inwardly—albeit more in the subconscious than in full consciousness—feels a stirring in the member of the astral body that corresponds to the physical body. And then, due to some external factor, a sensation may arise that necessarily manifests in the part of the astral body that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. But this really does happen; it is not merely a “theory,” but it actually occurs.

[ 19 ] If you have a mental image of the seven members of the astral body interacting with one another in the same way as the notes of the musical scale: prime, second, third, fourth, and so on, then when you surrender to the effect of a melody, this effect arises from your human constitution, based on the fact that when a particular note is present in the melody, it is experienced internally in the corresponding member of the astral body. A third is experienced in that part of the astral body which corresponds to the astral body itself. “A fourth is experienced in that part of the astral body which—to be more precise—corresponds to the intellectual or emotional soul. A fifth is experienced in that part of the astral body which corresponds to the consciousness soul. And if you recall that, in a more precise classification, we divide the astral body into nine parts, we must also divide it accordingly, based on the indications given. And I could say, listing them: The part of the astral body corresponding to the physical body—but in our current context, I can say—is experienced in the prime. I could say: The part of the astral body corresponding to the etheric body—in our current context, I can say, is experienced in the first. I could speak of the part of the astral body corresponding to the astral body itself; in our current context, I can say, it is experienced in the third.

Quint — Soul of Consciousness
Quart — Soul of Understanding
Third — Astral Body: Soul of Feeling, Astral Body
Second — Etheric Body
First — Physical Body

[ 20 ] But now you can also see that the presence of the major third and the minor third truly corresponds to the integration of the astral body into our entire human organization. We have a correspondence—you can find this in the relevant section of my book *Theosophy*—between, on the one hand, what we call the astral body and, on the other hand, what we call the feeling soul. So what I have called the third can correspond to the astral body or, alternatively, to the feeling soul. One yields the major third, the other yields the minor third.

[ 21 ] In fact, our experience of a musical work of art is based on this inner musical activity of the astral body; however, while we listen to the work of art with our ego, we immediately immerse that experience into our astral body, into certain subconscious regions.

[ 22 ] But this undoubtedly leads us to a very significant point. Let us then consider ourselves, insofar as we are astral beings who carry an astral body within us. What are we like in that regard? We have been created as astral beings according to the musical laws of the cosmos. Insofar as we are astral beings, we have a musical connection with the cosmos. We ourselves are an instrument.

[ 23 ] Now let us suppose that we did not need the physical sounding of tones, but could instead listen to that creative activity in the cosmos that brought us into being from the cosmos within our astral constitution; then we would hear the music of the worlds, what has always been called the music of the spheres. Suppose we were able to consciously immerse ourselves in our astral being and elevate this astral being to such a high level of power, to such spiritual power, that we could hear the creative activities of the music of the worlds; then we could say to ourselves: The cosmos, with the help of our astral body, plays out our very own being. — This thought that I am now expressing to you lived within people in earlier times—truly lived. And by drawing attention to such a thing, one points once again to the complete materialization of human development as it entered the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. For, of course, this thought does not live in the outer culture of humanity today. Humanity knows nothing of the fact that the human being is a musical instrument in relation to his astral body. But this was not always the case, and the fact that it was not always so has, so to speak, been forgotten. For there was a time when people said to one another: “There once was a John, and this John was able to enter a spiritual state in which he heard the music of the heavenly Jerusalem.” — They said: All earthly music can only be a replica of this heavenly music, which began with the creation of humanity. And they felt—the more religiously inclined portion of humanity—that by turning toward the desires of the physical world, human beings have absorbed impulses within themselves that cloud and obscure the heavenly music. But at the same time, they sensed that there must be a path in human evolution—through a purification from the chaotic external life—toward the goal, as it were, of hearing the spiritual music of the worlds through the external material music.

[ 24 ] This relationship—between external, material music, whose divine origin one sought to highlight, and its archetype in the spiritual world as heavenly music—was beautifully expressed as early as the 10th, 11th centuries—this relationship between external, material music, whose divine origin they sought to highlight, and its archetype in the spiritual world as heavenly music—by demanding that human beings also make music a form of sacrificial worship, a religious service, and become aware that, when they produce sounds, they must free themselves from their connection to the merely chaotic—as it was perceived—impure external world. Life in ordinary, external language was perceived as impure. And one felt a rising toward spiritual heights when one rose from language to the reflection of heavenly music in music. This was expressed by saying: “Ut queant laxis resonare fibris mira gestorum famuli tuorum solve polluti labii reatum, S.J. — Sancte Johanne.”

[ 25 ] If one were to translate this, one would have to say: So that your servants, with vocal cords now lightened, may sing of the wonders of your works, atone for the guilt of the lips that have become earthly—the lips that have become capable of speech—O Saint John. — For the one to whom people looked up on such occasions was, after all, a listener of the heavenly Jerusalem. And if you were to highlight certain elements contained in such a saying: ut, from resonare re, from mira mi, from famuli the fa, from solve the sol, from labii the la, S.J. is si. The ut was later replaced by do, but it was originally the designation for do. Thus you have: do re mi fa sol la si, that is, what is used in the Middle Ages for musical notation. This is hidden within this verse.

[ 26 ] On such an occasion, we see how—at the very moment we look back at what, through atavistic clairvoyant insight, still lived on in people’s minds as late as the 11th and 12th centuries—it vanishes in the face of the influx of the materialistic worldview, how it fades from human consciousness. But now we live in a time when we must rediscover this through spiritual insight, when we must recreate it. It is truly as if everything were clearly showing us that evolution has undergone a descent, that it has gone so deep that a swamp has formed. The muddy water of this swamp is all that the materialistic worldview has produced in terms of mental images. And now we are in the process of working our way out of the materialistic swamp, climbing out of it, and rediscovering what humanity lost during its descent.

[ 27 ] As I hinted at yesterday, human beings do not, strictly speaking, sleep only at night; rather, certain aspects of the human being also sleep during the day. At night, it is primarily the thought-feeling aspect that sleeps; during the day, it is primarily the will-feeling aspect that sleeps. It is precisely into this volitional-emotional aspect that one plunges when one allows the “I” to submerge into the astral body. And what is at work in the sound of a musical work of art is precisely this: that the human being consciously plunges, with the “I”-nature, into that which is otherwise asleep. When you sit listening to a symphony, this involves an inner process within you of dampening your ordinary, mundane thought life and, through your spiritual and soul experience, diving down into that which otherwise lies dormant during waking hours. This establishes the connection between the musical effect and all the vital forces in the human organism; it brings about a connection with everything that, as it were, permeates and flows through the whole human being, causing him to become one—I would say, to grow together—with the flowing masses of sound.

[ 28 ] And we sleep at night. Then our mundane thought life is subdued within a realm that we do not yet have access to in our normal consciousness. But if we succeed in bringing into our ordinary daytime consciousness what is awakened in the sleeping person—if what a person experiences in sleep is immersed in waking daytime life—then you will surely notice the contrast: as I just said, in the musical experience, the “I”-experience is immersed in that which sleeps during the day; now we immerse what we experience at night into waking life—and this becomes poetry. This is what people like Plato sensed when they called poetry “divine dreaming.”

[ 29 ] It is precisely when we immerse ourselves in the connection between human beings and the entire cosmos—as one can, in a sense, do under the guidance of the arts—that we can breathe life into what would otherwise remain mere conceptual templates. But please note that things are not conceptual templates! It gives certain people such pleasure when they can arrange what is developed in my book *Theosophy* arrange it all in sequence within a schema; and certainly some have thought it was sheer obstinacy on my part that I deviated on this point here, where I presented three triads—but in such a way that they interlock—from what was learned in earlier theosophical circles. But if one delves into what one experiences, into the reality of the matter, then one will see from the very nature of major and minor melodies that these things are deeply rooted in the entire structure of the cosmos. Only when these things are brought to life from within the entire structure of the cosmos do they correspond to a true reality.

[ 30 ] Of course, it was inevitable that some things were said at the beginning whose true reasons only gradually became apparent over the years. One had to accept the risk that people would come forward with their criticism because they do not know what these things are based on and how they must appear when one takes into account the entire structure of the cosmos. But this is still the case with many things. A great deal can still be objected to regarding much of what is being said now if one approaches it with superficial concepts. But over the course of years, or perhaps decades, what will justify these things will emerge. And the insights of Spiritual Science themselves will bear fruit when they are no longer mere theories but become a living reality.

[ 31 ] Everything depends on rising above what one initially associates with the mere words “physical body,” “etheric body,” “astral body,” and so on, to bring these ideas to life; for then a true understanding of the world emanates and radiates from this coming to life. And let anyone who is capable of this now compare what has emerged in aesthetics over the course of the last century and a half with what can follow from a knowledge of human organization for the development of the arts. And anyone who makes this comparison will see how impossible it is, without knowledge of human organization, to arrive at a true understanding of what lives in our surroundings and brings us joy.

[ 32 ] I would like to evoke a sense of the fact that Spiritual Science itself truly provides an initial impulse that will continue to develop further and further, that we are, so to speak, called upon to take the very first steps, and can sense what will become of these first steps long after we are no longer present in this incarnation.

Architecture
Physical Body

Sculpture
Etheric Body

Painting
Astral Body

Music
I

Poetry
Spirit-Self

Eurythmy
Life-Spirit